'Great, Luther. Thanks.'
Luther gave me the slow nod, considering. 'You really a cop?'
'Luther,' I said, 'I am the right hand of God.'
Luther nodded again, and the nasty smile came back. 'If you plannin' on smitin' the sinners, I be glad to help.' He pushed back his long coat and showed me a little Rossi.32 snub-nose stuck in his pants. He remembered the ice pick, all right.
'Strictly surveillance this time around. Any smiting will have to come later.'
Luther shrugged and closed his coat. 'I be here.'
I went back across to the Taurus. Six minutes after I got settled Charlie and a tall black man in a hat with a pink feather and a camel overcoat came down and got into the Lincoln. When they passed Luther and his buddy, the tall black man said something to Luther and laughed. Ice-pick joke. Luther slid his right hand under his coat and watched the tall black man with sleepy eyes until he was in the Lincoln. It was going to take more than an ice pick the next time.
I followed the Lincoln down to 135th Street, then east across the island to Second, then straight down Second to the Queensboro Bridge and across the bridge into Queens.
We worked our way down off the bridge into an area of row houses and basketball courts and four- and five- story residential buildings. The sidewalks were crowded and most of the faces were black or brown, but not all of them, and many of the signs were in Spanish. The Lincoln pulled to the curb outside of a little coffee shop named Raldo's Soul Kitchen, and Charlie and the tall black guy went inside.
I looped around the block and parked in front of a barbershop, then walked back to Raldo's and looked in through the window. Charlie and the tall black guy were sitting at a booth with a shorter black guy and another white guy. The white guy looked sort of working class and the black guy looked like a fashion-row closeout with small eyes. Charlie handed the white envelope he had gotten from the guy on Amsterdam to Santiago, and Santiago handed it to the other black guy. Chain of command. I went back to the Taurus and waited.
Sixteen minutes later Charlie DeLuca and the two black guys and the other white guy came out of Raldo's and walked to a green Jaguar Sovereign parked up the block. The black guy with the small eyes opened the trunk and took out two brown-paper grocery bags and gave one of the bags to Charlie and the other to the working-class white guy. Charlie's bag was bigger and looked like it weighed more. As soon as they had the bags, the white guy went to a brown Toyota Celica and Charlie came back to his Lincoln and the two black guys got into the Jaguar. Nobody shook hands and nobody said so long, but everybody looked happy. Also, everybody went in different directions.
Portrait of the detective in crisis. Stay with Charlie or go after the black guys or the guy in the Toyota? Staying with the black guys would be hardest, and if they made me so soon after their meeting with Charlie, they'd tell him, and he might get scared and stop whatever he was doing. I went with the white guy in the Toyota.
We drove north to the Long Island Expressway, then east to 678 and then south through the heart of Queens to an exit that said Jamaica Avenue. Two blocks east of the Jamaica Avenue exit, the brown Toyota turned into a little parking lot next to a bright, modern cast-cement building with a sign that said BOROUGH OF QUEENS POLICE.
He parked in an empty spot next to a Volkswagen bug and got out with the brown-paper bag. He opened the Toyota's trunk, tossed in the bag, then took out a cop's blue-on-blue NYPD uniform and a gray gym bag. He closed the trunk, then carried the uniform and the gym bag into the station house.
I sat in the Taurus in the Borough of Queens Police parking lot for a very long while until a couple of cops with thirty years on the job gave me the bad eye, and only then did I drive away.
Amazing what you learn if you just wait and watch.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
I called Rollie George from a pay phone outside a Korean market and gave him the license numbers off the cop's Toyota and the Jaguar Sovereign. I told him that one of the black guys might be known as Santiago, and I asked him to get me anything on them that he could.
Rollie grunted. 'I don't like we got a cop in this. Maybe he's undercover.'
'Maybe.'
'Yeah.' He didn't say anything for a minute, but there was a lot of breathing. 'You know, Elvis, I haven't asked who you're working for.'
'I know.'
After a while Rollie said, 'Okay. I'll run these and get back to you.'
Thanks, Rollie.'
He hung up without saying good-bye.
By the time I got back to Karen Lloyd's, the sun was settling comfortably in the trees to the west and the arctic air had made its predicted move down from Canada, dropping the temperature and clouding the skies.
Joe Pike was sitting in one of the wing chairs with the cat in his lap and Karen Lloyd was making noise in her kitchen. I had the car, but Pike beat me back. One of life's imponderables. I said, 'You made good time.'
'I followed the kid with the pimples to an apartment building on Broadway and 96th Street. Name on the post drop was Richard Sealy.'
'Aha. Richie.'
'Uh-huh. I called Rollie a little bit after you. He'll run a make.'
There was more noise from the kitchen. Heavy glass tumblers set hard on a counter. 'You been here long?'
'Long enough.'
More noise. Drawers slamming shut. I looked toward the noise, but Pike didn't. 'Everything okay?'
'Nope.' Pike's mouth twitched.
Karen Lloyd came out of the kitchen with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her mouth was narrow and tight, and she took short, quick steps. She said, 'We're having the Colonel. I want you to come here and look at this.' She put the Colonel on the table and went back through the kitchen toward the garage. I looked back at Pike. 'You get it like this, too?'
Pike's mouth twitched again.
I went back through the kitchen. Karen was standing in the laundry room at the door to the garage with her arms crossed. The door to the garage was open. 'Look at what that bastard did.'
I thought she meant Charlie DeLuca, but she didn't. A gleaming new blue and white Yamaha snowmobile was parked next to her LeBaron. 'It's going back. I told Peter about the gifts. I thought we had it straight, but this is what I find waiting for me when I got home with Toby.' No questions about the mafia. No
I said, 'That louse.'
She turned red. 'It's not an appropriate gift. Toby's too young.'
'Sure.'
'It's dangerous. Can't you see that?'
'It's not as dangerous as motorcycles, and I don't think it'll skew your son's values if he gets a nice gift from his father.'
She shut the door on the garage. 'I wouldn't think that you'd understand.'
Karen went back into the kitchen and put out the rest of the things she had brought from the Colonel and then she called Toby to the table. He came out sulky and silent. She asked him what he would like to drink and he said nothing. She asked him if he wanted rolls and the cole slaw and he said no. She asked him if he wanted a breast or a thigh and he said he didn't care. Sore about the snowmobile, I guess. Pike made himself a cheese sandwich and ate as if he were alone.
We were most of the way through the chicken when the white van that said WKEL-TV turned into the drive and the tall, thin woman got out. The weenie with the minicam got out with her. When Karen saw them coming
